The United States elections they are one of the most important events in world politics. For those who are not Americans, however, it is not always clear what the mechanism is that leads to the election of the president, the representatives of the House or the senators. Why can you get to the White House by losing the popular vote? Why do the two houses of parliament often not have the same majority? Here are all the answers.
The prologue to the elections: the primaries
The first phase of any election for a political role in the United States is the primaries. These are elections (or caucuses, a particular participatory elective method) which take place before those of the president and are internal to the parties. They begin in Iowa and continue for the following 5 months with real electoral campaigns.
However, the official presidential candidate is only nominated at party conventionwhere delegates from each state express support for the presidential candidate for whom they were nominated. If an absolute majority is missing and an agreement between candidates is therefore needed, the convention is defined as “Brokered”. Primaries, of lesser importance, are also often held for candidates for senators, representatives and governors.
The dome of Congress, the US parliament
How the President of the United States is elected
They are elected every four years in the United States the president and the vice president. Every citizen who has not been deprived of political rights and who has reached the age of 18 has the right to vote. To vote, you must register at the election offices in your state, an operation that must be repeated at every election (except in North Dakota, where registration is not required).
The president and vice president of the United States are not elected by the citizens, but by 538 electors which, together, make up the electoral college. The electors are chosen by the parties that win the presidential elections. These consultations, however, are not truly national, but state-wide.
The USA is a federation made up of 50 states and one districtthe District of Columbia, which in turn consists of the capital territory of Washington DC. Each state and DC are assigned a certain number of electors depending on their population. If a party wins the elections in a state it has the right to appoint all the electors of that same state.
This system has two exceptions, Maine and Nebraska. These two states have local laws that divide the territory into a number of electoral districts equal to that of the electors assigned to them, four for Maine, and three for Nebraska. The outcome of each election in each district determines which party will nominate that single elector.
The system of constituency leads to the existence of states that are more important than others for elections, the so-called swing states. Due to their socio-cultural and economic composition, some states are often led to vote almost certainly for one of the two main parties. Others, however, have more uncertain results, and this is where the candidates’ electoral campaigns focus on obtaining the best possible result. In fact, a few thousand votes can be worth even high percentages of the electoral college.
The electoral college is the reason why it is possible for a president to be elected even if he lost the elections from the point of view of the popular vote, as happened to Donald Trump in 2016. Although the electors are distributed based on population of a State, their relatively low number compared to the US population and the fact that each State must have at least one elector means that the vote of a citizen of a state with a low population counts as a percentage slightly more than that of a State with a very high population.
How congressional elections work
When voting for the president, US citizens are also asked to elect the representatives of the House and the senators, i.e. the members of the American parliament, the Congress. The Chamber in reality it is completely renewed every two years. Its members are 435 and are assigned to each state based on its population.
The states in turn divide their territory into electoral districts where a single representative is elected with a simple majority, whoever gets the most votes, not necessarily an absolute majority, wins. Only in Louisiana is a runoff election in effect.
Il Senate instead it is renewed every two years, at the same time as the Chamber, but only for a third of its 100 members, two for each state. The system provides that, except in exceptional cases such as by-elections, a state cannot elect both its senators in the same session. Also in this case a simple majority system is used, except for Georgia and Louisiana, which provide a system with a run-off if there is no candidate with an absolute majority. All citizens of that same state vote for the senators of a state.
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Source: notizie.virgilio.it
